GTRI will soon welcome the next cohort of its STING (Sparking Technology Innovation and Growth) program, a 10-week professional development experience designed to help employees better understand sponsor needs, define meaningful problems, and collaboratively develop solutions with real-world relevance. The upcoming STING 7.0 cohort will begin in Spring 2026.

STING first launched in 2020. The program was created to address a familiar challenge in applied research environments: many of the skills that lead to successful outcomes are difficult to formalize, often learned only through years of experience. STING was designed to bring out those skills, make them teachable, and give participants a structured way to practice them in a low-risk, but high-impact setting.